Reform and opening-up still key to advancing modernization

Editor's Note: The following are excerpts of an interview of Zheng Yongnian, a professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), with the media on the upcoming third plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee.

Each third plenary session of the CPC Central Committee in the past has held a special meaning for China, having profoundly changed the course of the country. In December 1978, late leader Deng Xiaoping presided over the third plenary session of the 11th CPC Central Committee, which confirmed the shift of China's work focus from class struggle to socialist modernization, kicking off its reform and opening-up process. The third plenary session of the 14th CPC Central Committee in 1993 formulated the basic framework of the socialist market economic system and proposed the establishment of a modern enterprise system. The third plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2013 set the overall goal of comprehensively deepening reform.